


handfuls of heat

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 20:15:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/457934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post Swan Song AU: Castiel upon becoming human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	handfuls of heat

Everything awes Castiel. It doesn't make any sense to Dean at all, but it's a comfort. It actually really is. It's the things that he's just used to- the touch of wind on skin, sunsets, french fries, stupid romcom movies- are new and fresh and vibrant and overwhelming to Castiel, and it's a bit like watching something rare and fragile and newborn climb out of its shell.    
  
It also terrifies Dean, because you can't  feel  like that. You can't feel like that and  live . It's impossible. It hurts too much.   
  
He takes a break from hunting for a while, and his job becomes introducing Castiel to everything that's good about the world and keeping him away from everything that's horrible. Not that Cas doesn't know. Of course he knows. He's a goddamn soldier. But there's something completely different from knowing something as an angel, when those things are your job, and knowing them as a human being, when every ephemeron catches your attention and you lose sight of what's big and what's small, and everything leaves its rightful place in space as something indifferent to you and lodges itself in your chest.   
  
*   
  
"But you ate before," Dean says. He's reluctant to bring up the burgers. He has a feeling they might be a sore spot. "Is it very different?"   
  
Castiel nods, serious, mouth full of fries. After swallowing, he says: "It's the full occupation of the body, I think. The senses ensnare the mind. They're not auxiliary. They're a fundamental part of how humans operate. It's... unexpected."   
  
"Huh."   
  
Castiel tries to explain more about it in the car. He sits in the passenger seat now, and Dean ignores the way it makes his chest hurt. "Humans are wobbly."   
  
"Eh?" Dean starts the engine, and looks at Castiel in time to see him close his eyes in pleasure at how the car purrs.   
  
"Their center of balance. Everything affects them. They change, they..." Hesitation. "I can feel myself being very pliable, open to suggestion- not just verbal ones, but environmental cues, the actions of people around me."   
  
Dean tries to ignore the way Castiel's mouth forms  pliable  and  suggestion . "Yeah, what does that have to be with  wobbly ?"   
  
"Easy to push over- not in terms of will, but- easy to affect, to break down- Dean, how do you live with all this?"   
  
Dean thinks about defending his species against those allegations, but a better answer is just "you get used to it."   
  
"I don't think I ever will."   
  
"Like you said. We're pliable. We get used to things."   
  
Castiel frowns. The way he makes expressions now- without conscious thought- "That's... sad."   
  
**   
  
They can't hang out at Bobby's forever, whatever the man says, so Dean- with much apprehension- rents a flat.   
  
He's pretended to buy property to get at monsters a lot more often than he has actually done so, which is never. They assume he and Cas are gay, which Dean has put up with while wandering around the country with Sam more times than he can count, but it makes him a lot jumpier, and he tries not to get snappish.   
  
There's something really creepy about the Impala getting an actual parking space. For it. It's not meant to be parked.   
  
They've almost finished settling in- neither of them have important house things, it doesn't take long- when Dean goes to get some things he forgot from the trunk and hears Castiel talking to the car.   
  
"It's all right, the good things come back eventually," he's saying, touching the gleaming hood.   
  
Dean wonders what he's talking about.   
  
***   
  
Cas likes jogging. Dean prefers harder, quicker workouts, but when he thinks about it, he understands what Cas gets from it. Runner's high (Cas likes things that feel unusual or extraordinary, Dean has noticed), wind in his hair, the movement of a body Castiel still recognizes as strange and wonderful instead of just... being a stupid body. Bodies are bodies, they bleed and get possessed and rot in graves when you die. They're pretty shitty.   
  
He likes being hungry, too. Dean imagines what it's like. The perfect moment when you give something to yourself that you've been deprived of.   
  
Dean joins him the next day, and the pavement feels pretty good under his feet.   
  
****   
  
He's got a fair bit of money stores up, here and there- some grateful people, lots of fraud, some betting, rich monsters. He doesn't  need  a job, but he wants one, so he starts looking for one. So does Cas, although Dean's not sure it's a good idea.   
  
"Why not?"   
  
Because... because.   
  
"I can still be useful." (Clipped.)   
  
Dean finds something low-paying and satisfying at an auto shop, and Cas finds the library, where he can't believe they pay him to be around books. He's bemused by money, anyway. He's older than the concept of barter.   
  
"I understand it perfectly," Cas says, and gets completely ripped off when he goes to buy a bicycle without consulting Dean.   
  
"You really don't," Dean says, and goes to the bike place to give the owner a piece of his mind.   
  
*****   
  
Cas likes the bike. He says the way it works reminds him of being human.   
  
"Wobbly?" Dean suggests. He has bandages at hand. The bend of Castiel's knee is bony, awkward, human, skinned. He's riveted by it for a second, and understands briefly how Cas feels, to be locked so fully in an instant that it becomes very long, very deep, like a cut. He pulls back from it hastily, because it's dangerous.   
  
"The bit where going forward is the thing keeping you upright," Cas says, pedaling around him tentatively, and then crashes to the ground.   
  
Dean has bandages, but he also has a camera.   
  
******   
  
Two months pass after Stull Cemetery (it's the easiest way to refer to the event) when Dean wakes up from a vague, innocuous dream and turns over in his bed and realizes that he's in a flat, there's only one bed in this room, and Sam is gone.   
  
And that it's not fair.   
  
He's trying to choke down what feels like his throat when someone touches his shoulder. He whips away from it, turns around, and Cas is standing there in gray cotton pajamas, eyes and mouth soft with sleep. His fingers are still hovering in the air.   
  
"It's all right to cry," he says.   
  
Dean looks at him, bewildered. "I'm not crying."   
  
Cas reaches out again and strokes his thumbs down Dean's cheeks.   
  
"Oh," Dean says, and realized the things caught in his throat are sobs. "Yeah."   
  
Nothing's going to make that better. Here, finally, something that he's utterly helpless against. All the free will in the world can't bring Sam back, and while he's here working with cars and picking furniture on eBay, Sam is being-  being , without the option of  not being , without the option of  I'll let you off the rack if you.   
  
Dean chokes wordlessly, and the billions of people in the world aren't worth a scrap of it. He doesn't give a fuck about them. He wants his brother back.   
  
*******   
  
He realizes that he should never have gone to Hell for Sam. Not if this is how it felt. He'd much rather be dead.   
  
********   
  
"Let's travel," Dean says the next morning, and Castiel holds out the keys for him.   
  
He wishes Cas hadn't seen him cry- not because of the stupid machismo shit, although that too- but because Cas takes his grief and starts feeling it for him, too (and why do people do that? It does no good at all) and the car is all quiet and the road feels so long. Dean wants to say  be happy again , but that doesn't work. Although it should.   
  
"Let's forget about it," Dean tries.   
  
"Okay."   
  
He turns on the radio, which is an acceptable- preferable- substitute for conversation.   
  
They're somewhere skirting Minneapolis when Castiel says, "do you know how birds fly?"   
  
Dean is afraid that it's another metaphor.   
  
"Aside from their skeletal structure- they were  made  for flight, Dean- their wings displace air and... they fly on a technicality of physics, except nothing is a technicality, of course- they're completely dependent on the atmosphere and gravitational force of the earth. The most modern airplane has nothing on their grace and efficiency."   
  
Dean turned off the radio. "What are you trying to say?"   
  
Castiel looked surprised. "Nothing. It's just interesting. Isn't it?"   
  
"Huh," Dean says.   
  
*********   
  
They try out all sorts of food. Good food, expensive food, and although Dean knows nothing about wine, he makes an effort anyway. Sam would have been better at this.   
  
He finds himself looking forward to the next stop.   
  
America's kind of big.   
  
I mean, like, there's a lot of stuff in America.   
  
...Dean figures.   
  
**********   
  
Cas discovers anger on this roadtrip. Not righteous angelic fury or the red focus of battle, but the human rage that locks down every cell of you and makes your fists curl in  I want to see you hurt . Not at Dean, because Dean has been (to his own surprise) pretty good at keeping his issues away from Cas, going to the gym or hooking up with strangers when the random bouts of stress get to be too much. Dean comes back from the bathroom and sees a tall, built sort of guy reeling back from Cas, touching his hand to his face and looking kind of baffled.   
  
Castiel- looks angry. Not in the strange focused way he had of being mad when he was an angel, but the kind of fury that pulls you apart into pieces and you just stand there and will something to die. Dean strides over to them quickly, and when the man looks like he's going to punch back, Dean does the smart thing and hits him as well, with no idea of what's going on beyond  no, I won't let you.   
  
"Let's get out," Dean says, because it's broad daylight in a family restaurant, for chrissakes, not even a bar, and people are staring, and Dean doesn't want to get sued. They've ordered, but the food hasn't arrived yet. "Shut the fuck up," Dean adds to the man, who's on the ground. "Don't mess with my buddy."   
  
They get into the Impala. The tires scream as Dean drives out.   
  
Castiel is shaking. "I could have stood to hit him one more time," he says.   
  
"Oh, we messed him up pretty good. Mind telling me what that was about?"   
  
"He was threatening his child. Dean, what he was saying- we have to go back, we have to stop him. Turn the car around."   
  
"Could be just talk."   
  
"It  wasn't ."   
  
Dean feels cold and tired. "Cas, no. What are we gonna do, huh? Beat him up and tell him not to do it again? Tail him until the kid's grown up to make sure he doesn't?"   
  
"We could-" and then Castiel falters, staring at his hands. The right one's all red in the knuckles. "We're supposed to change things."   
  
"No."   
  
"You're the righteous man," Cas says, voice small and helpless.   
  
Dean repeats, "no."   
  
Castiel's face crumples, and Dean feels the realization going on in the passenger seat- you can't save everyone, and sometimes you're not supposed to, and monsters are usually easier than humans to deal with, and you save the world and turn around to say  I did it all for you only to figure they're all too busy being terrible to each other anyway and it might as well not have mattered.   
  
And shit doesn't change and being human means you make a firestorm of your life and then you figure you've maybe charred, maybe, an  inch  on the book of all the things that are wrong with the world.   
  
Anger, for Dean, has always been coupled with helplessness.   
  
Every bit of you battering against something that doesn't even notice.   
  
***********   
  
Cas likes opera. Typical. Dean falls asleep midway, and wakes up to find Castiel's jacket draped over his torso. All of him is angled towards the music, like a tree drinking in sunlight.   
  
"Ugh," Dean says.   
  
He buys Castiel an iPod, and gets him some really super headphones. Cas likes opera, Rachmaninoff, Nicki Minaj, and Aerosmith, and some folk music. He doesn't get dubstep ("people spitting in my ear") or Katy Perry ("why?"). He likes cheesy lyrics. Church music makes him sad.   
  
"It's just vibrations in the air," Castiel says one day, pensive. He gets to choose the radio channel on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Fridays. "And then it gets into your head and sets you on fire."   
  
Music's just... music. Or- oh well. Dean says yes when Castiel tries to get him to the opera again.   
  
He still falls asleep.   
  
************   
  
They go to Bobby's on Christmas Eve. He doesn't have a tree, but he has cake. Castiel has souvenirs from sixteen states.   
  
"No," Bobby says. "You cannot show me anything that will surprise me."   
  
"Some if it's useful," Dean says. "Cas bought wine. Some of it's older than you."   
  
Bobby grunts. "You know I can't appreciate that stuff."   
  
"Neither can we, we just like spending the money."   
  
They stay up chatting about safe topics late into the night, and then Bobby adds that one of the guest rooms has been converted into a second storage room.   
  
"Uh, I guess I'll take the couch?"   
  
Bobby looks genuinely confused for a moment. "Hang on, you aren't..."   
  
All of them look at each other for cues for a few seconds.   
  
"Hell, no," Dean says.   
  
"We aren't what?" Cas asks, out of the loop.   
  
"All right, you take the couch, then." Bobby shrugs.   
  
At 3 am, Castiel pads out of his room and touches Dean on the shoulder. Dean's awake, anyway, so it doesn't matter. "The bed's quite large, I can see why Bobby assumed we would share."   
  
It's kind of time they got something straight, Dean assumes. And then it occurs to him how silly it must seem to Cas, that sort of taboo. Two straight guys don't. Shouldn't. And Dean's sort of straight, and Cas is a virgin (how long, he idly wonders, until they go back to their settled life and Cas meets someone and then Dean congratulates him and he moves out and Dean... where  does  the future go? He has no idea.) and really, it seems silly to Cas, too, and the house is kind of cold.   
  
So instead of explaining the whole difficult thing to Cas (being drunk helps), Dean says "all right" and Cas guides him back to the room.   
  
The bed is large, and comfortable, and it has better blankets. Probably better to sleep in than in Bobby's own bed. Castiel slips his arm around Dean's waist and buries his face in Dean's shoulder.   
  
Dean's almost asleep when Castiel says, "I've never been in love before."   
  
That jolts him awake like a cup of ice water to the groin. "Eh?"   
  
"Love," Castiel says patiently. "I mean, of course I  loved  before. But I was never  in  love. Angels are made for love- love in the, the sheer mechanical sense, I recognize now, love as a function,  agape , but it's almost a completely different thing when you're human. Like the difference between airplanes and birds. It clutches and consumes."   
  
"I don't quite understand what you're saying," Dean rasps into Castiel's hair. Jimmy Novak's hair, he thinks, dark and soft and fine, and Castiel is just a thing of fire and light imprisoned there. Is he? It's complicated. At any rate, he's become something that loves. He doesn't know why Cas is so surprised. He's always known that before, that Cas loves.   
  
"You," Castiel answers. "I love you, that is, and it's always baffling, like eternally turning a corner and bumping into someone. You think you'd get used to it, like riding a bike or being hungry, but that's one of the things I'm still not used to. How you make me feel."   
  
"Cas," Dean says, after a long pause. "You can't just- say things like that."   
  
He can imagine Castiel's eyes opening, aware and inquisitive in the dark. "Why not?"   
  
"Because." Too raw, too honest, too... you can't flay yourself open like that and expect me not to be flayed in return. "It's three in the morning."   
  
"Oh. What- is that relevant?"   
  
Dean buries his face in the pillow. He wishes he hadn't drunk so much, then. "Not really."   
  
"Ah," Cas says. "You're evading."   
  
"I don't get life," Dean says.   
  
Cas sighs. "You're the one who should be good at it. I'm not very used to this, Dean."   
  
This is the wrong conversation to have while they're all tangled up in each other, but Dean figures that pulling away would be a mistake. Besides, he likes this. It's. It's cold outside, and Cas is warm. He might dissolve if he pulls away. "Not your fault, Cas."   
  
He can feel Castiel's eyes shut, the brush of his lashes against Dean's neck. He shivers and pushes all of his sobriety away to drag out the honesty. "I love you, too."   
  
"The affirmation is pleasant," Castiel murmurs sleepily, and Dean realizes that he already knew. That's not fair, when Dean hadn't. He drags his fingers through Castiel's hair, because Castiel's hair is simple and love isn't.   
  
*************   
  
They roast marshmallows over a fire the next day. Castiel keeps burning his, and Dean tells him when to pull away. He goes into get gloves midway, because Castiel's hands have gotten pale with the cold. Bobby doesn't say anything.   
  
Castiel is tasting the marshmallows. Watching big fat snowflakes pass over the fire and dissolve midair into heat and steam and water. Watching the leaping yellow heart of the flame. Dean is taking those snapshots with his mind (ageless Castiel, given a handful of decades to complete his existence, Castiel, upon whom human time has been imposed, who is standing next to him and toasting marshmallows and fumbling with his skewer through thick red mittens) while Bobby watches Dean, pensive and pleased.   
  
************   
  
Castiel discovers a portion of the underbelly of the human condition, which is the common cold. Dean doesn't catch it, and spends the first half of January back in his flat, playing nursemaid. It doesn't feel weird when there's no one to see or judge him, and Cas doesn't know enough to recognize that common, easy affection isn't common or easy. Dean learns how to make chicken soup and makes trips to the library (Castiel, even in the throes of what he thinks is death, has an insatiable appetite for books) and Googles things you do for sick people. He and Sam had mostly left each other well enough alone unless it was serious.   
  
"I'm miserable," Cas says. "There's just something inescapable about pain when you're human."   
  
Dean's briefly glad that Castiel is too ill to catch the jolt that gives him.   
  
"Yeah," he just says, putting down a new box of tissues. He had to teach Cas how to blow his nose, which was an obligation of the being-in-love thing, Dean was pretty sure. Not all that familiar. "Hey, you know, these things are over pretty quickly, you just have a few days left at most."   
  
Cas droops.   
  
Dean shifts from one foot to another. "Do you want to watch some movies?"   
  
Cas doesn't get horror. Noir bores him. The sad ones make him leak everywhere, and Dean gets rid of them pretty quick. He loves romcom, and Dean leaves him to it. By the time Cas recovers, he's learned how to work the TV by sheer necessity, and Dean comes home every night to see him curled up in the couch, watching this or that show. It's pretty surreal.   
  
"Don't you like books?" he says pathetically, feeling a bit like a parent.   
  
"I like books," Cas says, "and I like TV."   
  
That's pretty simple. "Okay."   
  
"The pornographic ones always culminate in sex," Castiel says.   
  
"Oh, sex," Dean says. "Yeah, that."   
  
"But the pleasure seems contrived, on the TV, and I'm not sure if it's that..." Castiel is blushing. "Is it a big deal? I know it is, but I don't know why."   
  
"Yeah," Dean says, and catches himself. "Look, the TV. I mean, the people who make pornos, you gotta get that they prioritize the performance over enjoyment. So it's not the same thing."   
  
"So it's supposed to be better than that?"   
  
"Do you want Chinese or Thai?" Dean says, thrusting the menus at Cas, who is easily distracted by food. Cas likes food, and isn't that good at telling the big things from the small things that he'll recognize that Dean is using a small thing to stop talking about a big thing.    
  
Sex. How do you talk about sex. Sex is exhilarating and diverse before it palls, before everything else in your life overshadows it, and then even as a distraction it becomes a sad, flimsy thing. Sex is just really simple, once you're not shy, and you're tired, and it's easier to hire a hooker than dance around and flirt with someone who's not. And Dean is not shy, and he's tired.   
  
Cas isn't, and it has to be good for Cas. It's Dean's job to show him the good bits of being human, all that sensory overload and dizzy happiness and the way he cries at romcom movies and stops while jogging to watch butterflies, entranced at the way they stay airborne. (Flit flit flit, Dean thought, stopping with him, and he'd mainly envied them for the way them of their was their wings and not much brain. You can fly  and  you don't have to think about which way you're going. Lucky things.) Sex is going to be good for Cas. That works out, because Dean is good at sex.   
  
He doesn't recognize he's nervous until he fumbles badly with his chopsticks over Chinese takeout.   
  
**************   
  
He's thinking about Castiel watching porn when he suddenly remembers the faces Sam made when he caught Dean watching anime porn on his computer. Memories of Sam are like a perennial sucker punch, waiting for Dean to forget just before socking him again. He turns over in his bed and muffles his breathing in his pillow.   
  
***************   
  
Dean is beginning an only half-stuttered explanation about erections when Castiel gently interrupts. "I know all of that already."   
  
There's actually no reason he wouldn't. Dean feels foolish. "Then, uh, what do you want to- know."   
  
"The," Castiel says, and makes a butterfly gesture in the air.   
  
"Yeah, that," Dean agrees, because having sex is a pretty important part of sex. He remembers the slope of Castiel's shoulders in that bar, all that time ago. On one hand, it seems illogical for someone like Castiel to be shy about getting naked when he's so frank and surprised about everything else. On the other, everything overwhelms him right now. Sex wouldn't be an exception.   
  
"Are you sure you want to start this with me?" Dean starts lamely. "You know, oh, shit, that's insulting, isn't it."   
  
"I think so," Castiel says gravely, and leans over to kiss him.   
  
He doesn't quite know how to do it, and Dean makes a sound he didn't know he was capable of before tilting his face and showing him how. He's afraid of all of this, but he can't stop, and the only way to keep your balance is to forge ahead like you don't know you can fall over , but Dean has fallen over so many times before, it's fucking terrifying, it's like opening his skin and baring himself to the bone. It's just a fucking stupid kiss. It's Castiel's warm hands curled around his shirt. It makes Dean angry and afraid and lost, and with a rush of horror he wonders if this is how Castiel felt when he first realized what  feeling  was. If it felt like this. Why is Dean the one who has to learn?   
  
All this flashes by in a second, and meanwhile Cas is shifting on the couch, sliding his hips over Dean's in a sort of eager innocence, and Dean carefully puts aside the terror because it's his job to show Castiel things, and show them the good bits, because Cas has made impossible sacrifices and it's imperative that he be convinced that it was worth it. Doing things that aren't worth it is the worst.   
  
So after a while of kissing- Castiel gets the hang of it pretty quickly, mouth wet and eager, eyes bright (no one's told him to close them while kissing), body warm against Dean, every ray of him rooted to his flesh- Dean slides to his knees, unbuttons Castiel's pants. He's fairly good at this, if not excellent. He's motivated, too- he supposes that he'll muddle through.   
  
He mouths Castiel's cock through his briefs, and Cas makes this sound, a choked little gasp, like he's stunned. Dean has to grin, and gives a long, hard suck through the cloth that makes Cas give a full-body shudder. Maybe being locked in a body after millennia of being incorporeal is like taking off a blindfold in the sunlight- you're not used to it, everything is bright and keen and aching, reality a strong press on your skin instead of a thoughtless touch. Dean hopes Cas enjoys this, then, trailing his mouth over the bare, soft insides of Castiel's thighs, jabbing his tongue up towards his groin. Castiel's hands curl in his shoulders.   
  
Dean makes Cas come like that, and it's quick- Cas throws his head back and shakes, hips jerking up towards Dean's mouth, and there's a soft patch spreading on his underwear as he slumps on the couch. His eyes are pleasingly glazed, and Dean kisses Castiel's knees, the back of his right hand. His own erection is just a faint, disembodied impulse. Not important. He's afraid that Cas will ask to take care of him, but he's not that used to sex, yet, it hasn't entered his mind- nothing to do with selfishness.   
  
"Nice?" he asks, and buries his face in Castiel's hair. It enters his mind that it's not obligation to show Cas the nice things about being human that's driven him so far, over twenty states and a Christmas with marshmallows and stupid opera, it's a desire to vicariously find happiness. That's selfish and makes him hate himself, and wrapping his arms around Cas and inhaling the sweat-sex smell of him is easier than thinking, so he does just that.   
  
"That was lovely, Dean."   
  
"Okay."   
  
****************   
  
In June, they get a tip and hastily leave the country, their possessions painted over with sigils. Dean regrets not teaching Castiel how to shoot a gun properly. Castiel knows how they work, but he hasn't the load-fire-roll reflex of hunters, and- why had he thought they'd catch a break, honestly, why.   
  
Dean sleeps on the plane (pills, there's no alternative) and is shaken awake upon landing by Castiel, who's more serene and fascinated by the aerodynamics of their plane than Dean would have thought possible.   
  
"I was here before," he says, wandering out of the airport. He isn't familiar with them enough to get nervous at security checkpoints, but Dean is, knowing how easy it is for some beings  to hijack human systems for their own purposes.   
  
"Ankara?"   
  
"Turkey. Looking for God."   
  
He sounds sad.   
  
Dean books a shabby hotel and tries to be an ignorant American tourist. It's not too hard. He learns some Turkish phrases, but Cas is the one who can pronounce them perfectly. They move around a bit, making vague plans to hop over to Asia and then to Europe to lay low for a while.    
  
They don't make it.   
  
*****************   
  
At least we were caught by angels , is Dean's first thought.  Angels nearly destroyed the world  is his next.   
  
"I thought you were dead," Castiel says, looking stunned.   
  
"You're  human ," Balthazar says, looking equally shocked. "It was strangely hard to find you- no wonder."   
  
They stand there staring at each other, and Dean puts down his gun. "Friend of yours?"   
  
"Yes," Castiel says. "I- think."   
  
"Yes," Balthazar says, too smoothly for Dean's tastes. His tone is persuasive, not sincere. "Your vessel has nice teeth."   
  
"Er- he got braces in his youth," Cas murmurs. "Four years."   
  
Balthazar tells them they have to move hotels, and so they make a jump from Ankara to Copenhagen. Cas makes a face and says, to Dean: "I understand the point of your protests, now."   
  
"For a  week ," Dean reminds him.   
  
Balthazar, in the next few hours, becomes more and more visibly discontent with Castiel's condition. The next day, when Dean returns from brushing his teeth, he's not surprised to hear them arguing.   
  
"Cas," he says. "Are you even hearing yourself right now? You know what humans are, right? They're little castles made of sand that build themselves up on the beach, and then the tide comes in and sweeps everything away and it all starts over, this fucking stupid Sisyphian joke."   
  
"It's not like that at all," Cas replies patiently.   
  
"Everything they do is disgusting and feeble. Everything they create, every breath, every motion, like shadows cast by moth corpses on the wall of creation."   
  
Dean feels Castiel get angry besides him- feels the anger choke him- before it all abruptly dissipates, and Castiel laughs. "Balthazar," he says, and sounds pitying. "Look at me."   
  
"You're in a meatsuit. You're  locked  in a meatsuit. Does your friend even know what you looked like before you got in there?" To Dean, he adds: "he was glorious."   
  
"He still is, you dumb fuck," Dean says.   
  
"Have you even ever tried riding a bicycle?" asks Castiel.   
  
Balthazar, in irritation: "no, of course not. Why do you ask?"   
  
"Because you're not getting the point." Castiel turns away in exasperation.   
  
They're given some artifact that Cas regards with disapproval- apparently Balthazar stole it from Heaven, the guy has balls- "out of fondness," Balthazar says, and then they just seem to glide out of focus. Dean doesn't actually believe it works until they meet a demon, two weeks later, and it just passes them by.   
  
So. Safe, he supposes. Dean never put much stock in  safe , though, so he keeps salt rounds in his trunk and closet and in the drawer, of course, and there are sigils carved on doors and demon traps under and on carpets. He gets little decorative urns that he'd never give a glance at if he weren't settling in (settle, what a strange word) and fills them with holy water, because he's never going to take chances, ever. When they get settled down, Dean takes Cas to a shooting range.   
  
Castiel watches and aids his efforts with a quiet bemusement. "Are you afraid of death, Dean?" he says, adjusting the grip on his AR-15. It's not Dean's type of gun, or Castiel's, but you gotta learn.   
  
"What?" Dean snaps. "Oh. Well."   
  
He folds his arms.   
  
"I don't think I am," Castiel says serenely.   
  
"Good for you, Cas."   
  
"But I suspect I'm not going anywhere. You need a soul to go."   
  
"Don't you have one?"   
  
"Angels don't. We have grace, but I lost mine. It's not a perfect equivalent anyway. Grace is something you use, but a soul is its own end. Grace uplifts, and the soul soars. My existence ends with this vessel's death, but I expect you'll have a place up there somewhere."   
  
"I don't believe in God," Dean says.   
  
Castiel's mouth twitches. "Neither do I, you know. Believe."   
  
He shoots, pacing himself like Dean taught him.   
  
"I think they'll have you anyway," he says when he's done.   
  
"I don't want them to." Why the fuck would he? He and Sam and Cas, all pulled into different axes of oblivion. "I don't want to go anywhere when I'm dead. I just want to die."   
  
"I think I agree," Cas says, to his surprise. "There's something in just... disappearing. To stop existing. That it's possible is so strange. Things don't disappear, they go elsewhere or become something else, but to completely disappear- that appears to me to be an honor."   
  
"...Huh."   
  
"Are you afraid of death?"   
  
Dean eyes his life. Decades into the future, he's already dead. Years into the past, he's waiting to happen. He rises above time, watches the long stream of Castiel's existence abruptly end around the same time the blip of Dean's does.   
  
"I guess it's just something that happens," Dean says, because the hardest parts of his life are over, and he's still on his feet and he has a gun in his hands, and even if they do one new thing a day they still won't have parsed the world by the time they die. He raises his gun, looks at the target, and aims for the throat.

**Author's Note:**

> http://www.panhala.net/Archive/Funny.html


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